Tag: Convention

It sounds like the plot of a schlocky police procedural TV drama, but on Saturday night, 19 people wound up in the hospital in the suburbs of Chicago after they were sickened by exposure to chlorine gas in an apparently deliberate attack during the 2014 Midwest FurFest convention at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotel.

The uninvited participation of a hurricane at next week’s Republican convention would be superfluous. Buffeted by powerful internal winds, the party may be flooded with cash, but it’s already kind of a debris-strewn mess.

In this essay, first published in 2008, the iconic author objected to Newsweek’s obituary of his onetime rival, William F. Buckley, a “knightly man” who stood up to “bullies” like Gore Vidal ... by verbally gay-bashing him on national television.

Citing the specter of terrorism, an appeals court overturned a decision that would have forced New York City to turn over documents detailing the surveillance of demonstrators, street performers and other ne’er-do-wells who may have threatened the 2004 Republican convention ... and our national security, of course.

Get ready to hit those strip malls, party people: The 2012 Republican convention is going to Tampa, Fla. GOP leaders opted not to drop the balloons in Arizona, perhaps because of that state’s racist immigration law that essentially flips the bird at the nation’s fastest-growing bloc of voters.

This is—no joke—how Sarah Palin began her speech to the tea partiers: “I am so proud to be an American. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Do you love your freedom?” She then thanked the troops for her freedom, repeated that she was proud to be an American and said, “Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan!”

What if they threw a tea party convention and Michele Bachmann didn’t come? The first official such gathering of the right-wing “grass-roots” movement kicked off in Nashville on Thursday, and while it appears that the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota did pull out, Twitter-happy keynote (teanote?) speaker Sarah Palin was still very much on the books for her big moment Saturday. (continued)

Get ready for a lot more tea-bagging jokes and riled-up right-wingers hoisting fanciful posterboard creations and marching on Washington. That’s right, the so-called tea party movement is here, evidently not queer, and while those opposed to its members’ politics may not “get used to it” as such, they’d better have some smart comebacks at the ready during upcoming election seasons ... (continued)

After the collapse of trust in every sort of expert—after lenders financed houses for people who couldn’t afford them, bankers created systems they couldn’t even describe and, finally, we hear, Bernie Madoff ripped off even his high school friends—there is a residue of resilience.

Would the Republican VP nominee vote for herself? During her debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin said “we have to fight for” and “protect” our freedom, but her party and the policies she seems to support have crippled American liberty.

First John McCain hopped on the change bandwagon, and now he sounds like he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. The money quote in this new ad is better in the original Barack Obama.

St. Paul officials have decided to drop charges against journalists, such as Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, who were arrested during the recent Republican National Convention in the Minnesota capital. For her part, Goodman was pleased by the news but is calling for an investigation into the convention situation.

After days of insisting that she is ready to be president but not ready to answer questions, the McCain campaign announced that Sarah Palin will, at last, be interviewed by the dreaded media. Why ABC’s Charlie Gibson was specifically chosen for the honor, we don’t know, but he’ll be flying to Alaska to sit down sometime this week with the VP nominee.

What had been unexpected by the faithful at the Republican National Convention was McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee. McCain’s decision was cited as an example of his willingness to take a chance, to gamble everything on a hunch. It was much more than that.

John McCain, a lobbyist and fixture of Congress for more than 30 years, nominee of the incumbent party and self-proclaimed foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, tried to convince Americans Thursday night that only he could bring real reform to that wretched place called Washington. Updated

It’s hard to paint the other guy as an elitist when your wife wears an outfit that cost more than most houses. Vanity Fair estimates that Cindy McCain’s convention ensemble, complete with super jewelry, set her back somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000.

In the aftermath of her convention speech, it seems clear that Sarah Palin is an effective mascot for the base of her party. She excited the Xcel Center, but failed to impress independents, who didn’t like her sarcasm and still aren’t sure she’s qualified. John McCain will have to do the heavy lifting there, notes the Political Insider, if he has any hope of winning the election.

Here is what we have gotten with John McCain’s vice presidential selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, picked in part for her extreme anti-abortion credentials: an exquisite endorsement of the pro-choice argument.

Sarah Palin has been a one-woman soap opera the last few days, so when she strolled out onto that RNC stage Wednesday night without dragging a baby or a caribou carcass, she was already ahead of the game. Then she showed that she could handle the spotlight, casting herself as a small-town victim of the big-city media and relentlessly attacking Barack Obama.

Rudy Giuliani answered that question Wednesday with a despicable performance in front of the Republican National Convention. The former U.S. attorney said he learned as a lawyer “if you don’t have the facts, you gotta change ‘em.” Clearly, it’s a lesson he absorbed, filling his vindictive speech with distortions and cheap shots.

Beginning Saturday with a guns-drawn assault on a protester meeting space and continuing through the weekend with raids on houses of known activists in St. Paul, Twin Cities police have arrested over 300 anti-RNC demonstrators. At least 120 of them are accused of felonies, including trumped-up “conspiracy to riot” charges.

Sen. Joe Lieberman did his best to make Sarah Palin look good on Tuesday by giving a speech at the Republican convention. Although the GOP faithful managed to keep Lieberman off what might have been one of the least charismatic tickets ever, the self-described Democrat stood by his man.

Either Joe Biden is practicing a kinder, gentler form of campaign-trail politics or Karl Rove’s got another thing coming ... just not right this very moment. On Tuesday, after hearing that Karl Rove called him a “big blowhard doofus” at the RNC the previous day, Biden just had a smile and a patriotic compliment for Bush’s one-time sidekick.

As little as two days before he made his VP announcement, John McCain wanted to pick friend and Democratic turncoat Joe Lieberman, according to a report in The New York Times. But as in so many other decisions in his campaign, the alleged maverick caved to the far right of his party, which threatened to sink a McCain-Lieberman ticket at the convention. In the end he chose a woman he barely knew.

According to the “Democracy Now!” Web site, producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested Monday afternoon “while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention,” and host Amy Goodman was arrested for “defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.”

Many Republicans who originally planned to spend Monday in St. Paul with other Republican National Convention-goers were compelled to change their plans, thanks to Hurricane Gustav—including the GOP’s own presumptive presidential nominee, John McCain, who was busy over the weekend playing the anti-Bush when it came to disaster preparedness.

By all rights, there should be a revolt at this week’s Republican convention against John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate—for the very same reasons so many Republicans opposed President Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.

Hurricane Gustav has given the Republicans the excuse they needed to keep the unpopular president out of his party’s big party. John McCain will be spared another awkward embrace while George W. Bush is off in Texas pestering survivors.

New Orleans has figured into this election season as a reminder of the Bush administration’s bungled, uncaring response to Katrina. Yet amid so much talk of hope and change, on this anniversary of disaster, many in New Orleans hope for a change of policy—the kind of federal assistance that can make a dent in crises of housing, public safety, education, health care and levee protection. It makes sense for musicians to kick-start that conversation.

Truthdig videographer George Edelman sends us this snap of someone in Denver who didn’t seem too thrilled with all the Democrats running around. Wonder what Dr. Freud would say about this guy’s sign issues.

In 1948, a young Minneapolis mayor electrified Democratic delegates gathered in Philadelphia with a bold endorsement of President Harry Truman’s civil rights policies and the “promise of a land where all men are free and equal.”